Neither am I lol
I understand what you and Matt are saying RE: at fault party taking that option away, but I think it’s still just an option and how do you prove that you were actually going to exercise it?
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Your buyout / lease payoff will also include sales tax and fees.
Did you ever get an actual offer from an Audi dealer to buy out your car before the accident?
Just came here to say that in my experience AFS is the worst company in the entire world. – Have you ever dealt with Sirius/XM Radio customer ‘service’?
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Yes I have and they are biblically bad, it’s just that AFS is a different breed of heinous in my book. I am getting a kick out of 0% for 60 months though. 
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I don’t think you need to prove that. Options have (or had) value regardless of one’s intent.
But suing the LAPD to recover said value is going to be an uphill battle. I doubt anyone will take this on contingency due to the uncertainty. I bet they’ll want a big fat retainer just to dip their toes.
IANAA.
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Yeah, I understand that. Not arguing about value. But still… If he had a loan secured, or had notified AFS about exercising that option, then sure. This probably is similar to trying to argue the same point with AFS - I wanted to exercise my option, so give me my equity. Different from going after third party, of course.
I was going to give the case to my friend who’s an ambulance chaser and give him half. I’m going to follow up with him to discuss but my gut says the likely result will be LAPD says pound sand so maybe the most we’ll do is write a sympathy letter.
I do wonder if there is a lawyer out there looking for enough of these cases to do some kind of lobby/pressuring to regulators/AGs to change this practice (is it just me or is it not bizarre?) as jeisensc suggested. I have to imagine this is a very NEW and temporary thing (my car was purchased in May 2020 peak COVID shutdown + it’s an EV so it has an unusually high lease equity value). I imagine most of the time lessees are in the money the lease equity is at most a few K. I redid the math and the lease equity is $20,000 (my residual plus remaining payments is $44,400 and the insurance payout was $64,400).
It’s a shame I’m in this situation as I had ordered the Tesla Y and it’s due Sep-Nov so I really was planning on selling the car early, and was thinking about it before the accident to front run the alleged coming carmageddon. So in my head I was carrying the car as an asset. I’m fortunate enough to not be financially dependent on the loss but it stings.
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Not really.
Lets take you out of the equation for a minute and look at it like this:
LAPD destroyed AudiFS’s asset.
AudiFS is getting paid fair market value for their asset that LAPD destroyed.
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If the answer is no, then your actual equity was probably less than that.
Anyway, I’m out.
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Sorry, I should clarify, the standard car lease practice that if the lessee is underwater they are liable for the gap, but if they are in the money, the lessor gets the equity. You usually don’t see such a lopsided deal for such a highly regulated product in the consumer space. But I can see why there hasn’t been a lawyer that’s taken that torch and ran with it since cars are a depreciating asset.
That isnt standard practice. Nearly every lease that isnt toyota comes with a gap waiver and the lessee is not liable for the gap.
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Ah, I see…again, I am a relative lease noob. That certainly does change my mindset 
that’s incredibly unfair for the lessor!
Contact this lawyer.
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His actual equity, which he’s losing, is what his insurance paid out, not what dealers or carmax would pay had he bought the car out.
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Everyone keeps bitching about this, there are at least a dozen threads about it.
You signed a contract, you didn’t read it, sucks to be you.
You never saw these threads until the used car prices blew up. No one was complaining when their cars were under water and gap was eating the $3k they should have owed.
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Since the car is someone else’s property, what would you do/expect in the same situation if you’d instead borrowed the car from a friend or relative…
- If there’s an overage from the insurance company?
- If the friend/relative owed more than the FMV settlement from the insurance company?
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I dont even want to share my 2021 losses lmao. Hope things work out with the audi scenario.
Interested in this concept.
Let’s say I get into an accident, presumably going to be a total loss, and the minute after everyone is alive and well I scramble to start the process to buyout the lease and get the funds for it, how would that work out? It would still take a few days for the dust to settle and for the adjuster to actually come and declare It a loss right? I’d want to know the course of action if god forbid I was in OP’s shoes
Buy the car now, why wait.
This is basically like being able to add more wager after you know you have a blackjack
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If you buy the car after the accident, and were not the owner at the time of the accident, you run the risk that the insurance company will not pay you anything.
I think the OPs best/only option here is to pursue the LAPD for his loss.